Tag: trump russia

Have the Mass Arrests Started Yet?

Mike Rothschild

You might have heard that on March 24th, Attorney General William Barr released a short summary of the (presumably) much longer final report from Special Counsel Robert Mueller. The finding, at least that we’ve been told: Trump and his campaign did not actively collude with Russian interests, and that there wasn’t enough evidence to either charge or exonerate Trump with obstruction of justice.

Obviously, this doesn’t end the many other investigations currently looking into pretty much everything Trump has ever done. And there’s a metric ton of litigation to follow on from Barr’s letter. But to Trump/Russia true believers, even just this cursory summary is a crushing blow. And to Trump supporters and Russia skeptics, it’s total victory.

And to QAnon supporters? It’s nothing less than the first step in the final destruction of the deep state, leading to centuries of secrets being brought to light, darkness banished, evil punished, and of course, lots and lots of arrests.

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We Were Sitting Ducks For Russian Trolling

Mike Rothschild1 Comment

In the wake of the surprising indictments of 13 Russians involved in the coordinated trolling of the 2016 election, online arguments raged as to what impact it had on Donald Trump’s win.

But the already-fertile ground that the misinformation landed on was left mostly unexplored.

We know how Russia trolled us. But we still don’t really know why. And given the fairly low amount of effort they put into it, we don’t know why it worked.

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Missing Texts? Golf Fees? Deep State? A Guide to Conservative Infotainment Terms

Mike Rothschild1 Comment

If you want an alternate view of the Robert Mueller investigation into President Trump and Russia, just spend a few minutes taking in right wing infotainment.

It’s a fantasy land of non-stop TV, radio, and internet catastrophy where Trump is the victim of a vast conspiracy involving the liberal media, globalist financiers, Obama-era holdovers in the brutally corrupt Justice Department and FBI, and a Special Counsel hopelessly compromised by conflicts of interest.

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What Is “The Memo?” And Why Are Russian Bots Demanding to Release It?

Mike Rothschild2 Comments

If you’ve spent time on Twitter in the last 24 hours (and if you haven’t, congratulations), you’ve likely seen an odd hashtag blowing up political and Trump-supporter feeds: #ReleaseTheMemo.

Like virtually everything related to the Republican role in investigating Donald Trump’s ties to Russia, it’s a mix of bad faith, conspiracy theorizing, memes, blaming the Clintons and Obama, and Russian bots. So many Russian bots.

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Why I Don’t Believe President Trump Will Fire Robert Mueller

Mike Rothschild

Conventional wisdom is that we’re standing on the precipice of a Constitutional and moral crisis that will kick off when President Trump fires special council Robert Mueller and scuttles the former FBI director’s investigation.

There’s Salon asking whether Trump will fire Mueller. On the left, here are six disturbing signs from Think Progress that Trump is about to fire Mueller. And on the right, here’s National Review declaring it a foregone conclusion that Trump will fire Mueller.

In the absence of action from POTUS, his slavish acolytes in the conservative infotainment sphere have gone full broadside on Mueller, declaring him a partisan hack in charge of a biased deep state coup run by the Obama-Clinton machine. Apparently, Sean Hannity alone has called for Mueller’s firing or resignation nearly four dozen times since May.

And we know that when Sean Hannity speaks, Donald Trump listens.

But will he actually act? I’m not so sure. In fact, I’d be shocked if Trump went ahead and actually fired Mueller.

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